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The Inmates: Origins and Management

From mid August to early September 1944, inmates were being transported to Muehldorf via train. Each train was capable of carrying 1,000 people. These were all dropped off at Ampfing, the closest station to the Waldlager and bunker project. Secondary stops included Mettenheim and Muehldorf where inmates were distributed to various Unterkommandos. The total number of inmates in the Muehldorf region was estimated to be at 8,300 of which 5,224 survived the war. 4,929 of these survivors were male and 295 were female. The other 3,076 inmates all died in captivity.

Under direct orders from Adolf Eichmann, “Aktion Hoess” was launched which included the rounding up of over 400,000 Hungarians. The arrests were carried out on the basis of race and religion. Most of those arrested, Jews and Gypsies, were killed at Auschwitz, the rest was sent to German labor camps. As a result, most of the Muehldorf inmates came from Hungary. A lot of inmates also came from Lithuania, France, Poland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Greece and even Germany. Many political prisoners and criminals also found their way into the Muehldorf camps. Most of the Jewish Muehldorf inmates had sewn the Star of David unto their blue-white prisoner garments, which led many Muehldorfers to believe that this was a concentration camp for Jews. The clothing of the inmates, especially shoes, rotted quickly. Inmates therefore made shoes for themselves using wood and other useful materials.